Since the Uniform Bar Exam (UBE) was established, several people have asked me whether the UBE is an easier exam to pass — should they wait until the UBE to try taking the exam.

I’ve been rather curious myself, so I started keeping track of the passage rates before and after UBE implementation.

For those of you unfamiliar with the legal practice, each state requires passage of the state bar exam as part of the qualifications for legal certification. Although in the past, each state offered its own unique exam — the UBE is a standardized legal test with scores easily transferred across jurisdictions.

States are not obligated to implement the UBE, and many have chosen to continue using their own exam. Those who do do implement the UBE may also choose to add a state-specific component requirement. But the bar exam itself is more or less consistent across the member states.

The question is whether applicants are finding it easier to pass the UBE than they were the original state exam.

Here are the National average Bar Passage Rates from 2007 – Current day.

2007 ~ 67%

February ~ 55%

July ~ 73%

2008 ~ 71%

February ~ 58%

July ~ 76%

2009 ~ 68%

February ~ 53%

July ~ 74%

2010 ~ 68%

February ~ 56%

July ~ 73%

​2011 ~ 69%

​February ~ 60%

July ~ 73%

​2012 ~ 67%

February ~ 55%

July ~ 71%

​2013 ~ 68%

​February ~ 58%

July ~ 72%

2014 ~ 64%

​February ~ 57%

July ~ 67%

​​2015 ~ 59%

February ~ 52%

July ~ 63%

​2016 ~ 58%

February ~ 49%

July ~ 62%

I cant be the only person who thinks it was strange that the national average sat on 67-68% for several years. Nor the only person who finds it questionable that in 3 years, it suddenly dropped 10%. Something is wrong, and it cannot just be the students level.

I cannot count a lot of the states (they don’t say how many students sat and passed), but for the 19 states I could count for February 2017 the average was 50.01%.

If you compare the February 2017 applicant list with the passing list, only 20/62 people passed Maine’s exam (32.2%). I don’t know how many people were no-shows, but that’s really low for Maine. Compare to last year’s 60%.

Maybe I’m missing something – I only compared the list of applicants with the number of numbers on the passing list. Anyone have an explanation for this?